Graphic Design Inspiration Quotes

Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking. ~ Ellen Lupton

I wanted to study graphic design, because I wanted to work in an office with designer desks, ergonomic chairs, pool tables, and walls so colorful it looks like a flock of flamingoes exploded and splattered evenly from floor to ceiling. ~ Jarod Kintz

The fundamental failure of most graphic, product, architectural and even urban design is its insistence on serving the God of Looking-Good rather than the God of Being-Good. ~ Richard Saul Wurman

Good ideas come from everywhere. It's more important to recognize a good idea than to author it. ~ Jeanne Gang

Graphic Design is the communication framework through which these messages about what the world is now, and what we should aspire to. It's the way they reach us. The designer has an enormous responsibility. Those are the people, you know, putting their wires into our heads ~ Rick Poynor

The design process, at its best, integrates the aspirations of art, science, and culture. ~ Jeff Smith

Simplicity, carried to an an extreme, becomes elegance. ~ Jon Franklin

If you can't make it good, make it big. ~ Michael Rowley

I love to be a graphic designer, but could we get rid of clients somehow please? ~ Erik Spiekermann

I am interested in the idea of 'taste.' And by 'taste,' I mean opinion, inspiration and the craft of creating a personality through fabric and design. ~ Olivier Theyskens

So, I'm always around video games but I've always been interested in them from a visual perspective, with the graphic design and that whole thing. I don't know if that comes from my love of photography or what but that's always what's held my interest about them. ~ Sophia Bush

Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors. ~ George Santayana

If we had no bias, if we had no preconceptions, what kind of forms could we design? ~ Michael Hansmeyer

Research conquers doubt. It aligns everyone around the incontestable. Research is the key to clarity - in startups, enterprises, and life itself. ~ Laura Busche

Right and wrong do not exist in graphic design. There is only effective and non-effective communication. ~ Peter Bilak

Inspiration is hogwash. My work comes directly out of my loves and hates. Muses don't whisper in my ear, and ideas don't flow over my body like a cool rain. ~ James Victore

Graphic Design, which fulfills aesthetic needs, complies with the laws of form and exigencies of two-dimensional space; which speaks in semiotics, sans-serifs, and geometrics; which abstracts, transforms, translates, rotates, dilates, repeats, mirrors, groups, and regroups, is not good design if it is irrelevant. ~ Paul Rand

Typography is two-dimensional architecture, based on experience and imagination, and guided by rules and readability. ~ Hermann Zapf

My overall artistic goal is to marry graphic design with comic books and traditional storytelling. ~ Jonathan Hickman

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous. ~ Bill Moyers

Twenty-six letters: Marjorie Morningstar or Ulysses.
The man-made world means exactly that. There isn't an inch of it that doesn't have to be dealt with, figured out, executed. And it's waiting for you to decide what it's going to look like. ~ Chip Kidd

Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact. ~ Michael Bierut

Graphic design was largely about communication in an artistic or creative manner, much like writing is used to convey ideas. Many designers completely miss that aspect of the "art." Some are completely satisfied with just making things pretty, without taking the communication element into consideration. ~ Jeff Fisher

Penguin Classic, with the orange bands at the top and bottom; and the Gill Sans thirty-sixpoint title, all caps, centered and medium weight, in black on the white band in the middle. One of the designer Tschichold's prouder moments, when he finally woke the hell up and joined the twentieth century. ~ Chip Kidd

I went and studied graphic design, because it seemed to me that advertising is more honest - the image actually has a function. But once I started on that, I realized that was really boring. ~ Brian Froud

A designer can mull over complicated designs for months. Then suddenly the simple, elegant, beautiful solution occurs to him. When it happens to you, it feels as if God is talking! And maybe He is. ~ Leo Frankowski

The Hewitt sisters were these amazing - both sort of philanthropists and dilettantes who went out and single-handedly collected all of these of-the-moment designs in wallpaper and textiles and in graphic design in order to teach people about design. ~ Jake Barton

For after all, a poster does more than simply
supply information on the goods it advertises;
it also reveals a society's state of mind ~ Armin Hofmann

Brands play in an exciting sandbox of symbolic meanings. ~ Laura Busche

Everything and everyone represents at least one brand. Therefore, to brand or not to brand is not even a question. ~ Laura Busche

Kiddies, Graphic Design, if you wield it effectively, is Power. Power to transmit ideas that change everything. Power that can destroy an entire race or save a nation from despair. In this century, Germany chose to do the former with the swastika, and America opted for the latter with Mickey Mouse and Superman. ~ Chip Kidd

You cannot not communicate. ~ Paul Watzlawick

Effective problem solving in design requires a balance of strategy and spontaneity, intelligence and creativity. ~ Maggie Macnab

Mastering the art of asking questions is essential to creativity and innovation. A More Beautiful Question should be standard reading for all aspiring design thinkers as well an inspiration to those searching for a life of curiosity and meaning. ~ Tim Brown

The more uninteresting the letter, the more useful it is to the typographer. ~ Piet Zwart

I didn't think that personal style had much value in graphic design. ~ Stefan Sagmeister

We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. ~ Sherry Turkle

I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill, devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the discovery of the simple physical laws which underlie the complex phenomena of nature. It also requires a willingness to accept objectives which are limited by physical, logical, and technological constraints, and to accept a compromise when conflicting objectives cannot be met. No committee will ever do this until it is too late. ~ C.A.R. Hoare

Do you realize that you have the power to design a life that's meaningful and even remarkable? You and God are in a family partnership. He has not only blessed you with mortal breath, but with a purpose-filled life. He's given you power and will to control that life. This is a gift that He will never take from you. But when you humble yourself and give your will back to him, your life will be nothing short of miraculous. ~ Toni Sorenson

Typographical design should perform optically what the speaker creates through voice and gesture of his thoughts. ~ El Lissitzky

You are the only person on earth who can use your ability. ~ Zig Ziglar

Design is one of the few disciplines that is a science as well as an art. Effective, meaningful design requires intellectual, rational rigor along with the ability to elicit emotions and beliefs. Thus, designers must balance both the logic and lyricism of humanity every time they design something, a task that requires a singularly mysterious skill. ~ Debbie Millman

When I studied graphic design, I learned a valuable lesson: There's no perfect answer to the puzzle, and creativity is a renewable resource. ~ Biz Stone

A distinctive appearance and a simple set of characteristics lead to an extremely flexible brand. (pg. 38) ~ Woodrow Phoenix

The difference between closing or opening your eyes is the choice between the imagined vs real. Blinking is only human. ~ John Maeda

It's tens of millions of calculations just to design one connection between a piece of structural steel and another piece of structural steel. ~ Greg Lynn

In today's saturated marketplace, you'll go nowhere selling a "bunch of features." We are in the business of disrupting the market with brands that matter. ~ Laura Busche

The Church encourages those in power to be truly at the service of the common good of their peoples. She urges financial leaders to take account of ethics and solidarity. And why should they not turn to God to draw inspiration from his designs? In this way, a new political and economic mindset would arise that would help to transform the absolute dichotomy between the economic and social spheres into a healthy symbiosis. ~ Pope Francis

It does wonders for my own psyche to turn envy into inspiration. No matter how successful we become, we're never above that. ~ Hillman Curtis